Resource Procurement
by darkanine
Summary: In which Axel and Roxas go grocery shopping! In Halloween Town! With the Slender Man! Another installment in my 'Axel is Secretly Satan' series. Miniseries, epilogue with Saix up, COMPLETE.
1. Jogging Gorgeous Summer

_Another installment into the 'Axel is Secretly Satan' series - ASS for short. 8D Because who doesn't love to traumatize Roxas? _

_This was actually supposed to be a one shot, but it turned out really long so I separated it out into little mini chapters. I think it breaks up the pacing a bit better than the crappy line breaks supplied by FFN, at any rate. Enjoy. :3  
_

* * *

It had started off as a normal enough day, Roxas thought somewhat bitterly, as he ran alone through the dark woods of Halloween Town. His heart would have been pounding if he had one. He knew that, as a Nobody, he couldn't technically feel fear or anxiety or creeped-out-ness, but he was about as close as he could get to any of that.

The blonde youth glanced occasionally over his shoulder as he sprinted to who knew where, every once in a while catching a glimpse of him, always gaining and yet never actually moving. Roxas thought briefly of that video on YouTube that Axel had shown him with the cat that only moved while the camera wasn't on him. Kind of like that, he supposed, although he couldn't help but wonder if his pursuer simply teleported like Xigbar did. Or maybe he utilized the corridors of darkness that all Organization members were privy to. He wasn't there every time that Roxas threw a glance over his shoulder so it would make sense that he was in The Between sometimes when Roxas peeked...

A flash of white on one of the trees he was approaching caught Roxas's eye as he approached. He debated with himself for a fraction of a second, cast a look over his shoulder and, seeing nothing, slowed his sprint long enough to snatch a scrap of paper off the tree. He sped up again and looked down at the paper just long enough to almost run smack into a tree. It was a hastily scribbled note reading 'CAN'T RUN' with a small depiction of his pursuer in the bottom corner – a tall, incredibly thin man with no features wearing a black suit.

"Cheery," Roxas grumbled, stuffing the note into his jacket. "And unhelpful. Who had time to write that, anyways, if that guy was chasing them like this? I sure as hell wouldn't take the time to sit my ass on a tree stump and write a message for the next person to run past here unless it was instructions on how to get away." Number XIII threw his head back and let out a frustrated growl , wondering how in the world he had gotten himself into this stupid mess.


	2. Preparing the Preparations

_Every story needs a little bit of Axel and Saïx friendship._

* * *

"Saïx!"

The blue-haired superior officer raised his head from the book he was reading and offered a wan smile at the grinning redhead before him. "Good morning, Axel." His gold eyes shifted and he inclined his head. "Roxas."

"Good morning, sir," Roxas replied, raising a hand in greeting.

Though Saïx was barely older than his best friend, Axel, he had a sort of dignified air about him that commanded respect. Axel did not. Axel also was not the Superior's favorite member and effective second-in-command of the entire Organization. Thus, Saïx was 'sir'. Axel was 'man', 'dude', and, occasionally, 'fannydick'.

"So what's on the schedule today, Master Commander?" Axel asked, irreverent as ever, dipping his head to check the title of the book in Saïx's hand. New Moon. That sounded about right for the Organization's Luna Diviner. "Recon in the Deep Jungle? Heartless control in the Land of Dragons? Assassination in Radiant Garden?"

"Resource procurement, actually," Saïx replied, unperturbed by Axel's casual demeanor. They had been friends in their other lives and while they didn't exactly see eye to eye as Nobodies, Saïx clearly had a lingering fondness for the firebug. "You'll be picking up some items we need from one of our contacts. Actually, Roxas is your partner today so you'll both be going."

"Grocery shopping?" Roxas asked incredulously, his eyebrows disappearing into the swirl of blonde hair covering most of his forehead. "You're sending us grocery shopping?"

Saïx lifted an eyebrow and pursed his lips. "Resource procurement. Where do you think our food and potions come from, Number XIII? Marluxia can't grow frozen pizzas in that garden of his, you know."

"And where would we be without frozen pizza?" Roxas remarked sarcastically.

"Why can't you send Zexion? He would be thrilled at the prospect; he'd probably even write out the shopping list in the form of one of his emo poems," Axel complained. He hesitated then added, "On second thought, send Larxene. It's her job anyways, she's a woman."

"Oh? I thought you'd be excited, Axel. The job's in Halloween Town after all," the bluenette said, smiling coyly. Axel's ears pricked up and Saïx's eyes glittered with satisfaction, knowing that he had won. "But if you really want recon in Atlantica that badly, I'll allow you to switch with Larxene…"

"No!" Roxas and Axel exclaimed simultaneously.

"No more finny fun!" begged Roxas, his eyes wide as he remembered his last visit to the underwater realm.

"Splendid," Saïx remarked, reaching into his coat pocket and pulling out a sheet of paper. He handed it to Axel and said, "Your acquisition dossier."

The redhead turned his emerald eyes on the paper and immediately recognized it as a sheet torn from the magnetic note pad stuck to the fridge in the kitchen where everyone was supposed to write down items that they desired or were out of. He knew this partially because of the taupe puppy and paw prints border that Saïx himself had picked out with his help, and partially because a list of varying items in different handwritings filled the page and the words 'shopping list' were emblazoned in larger print at the top. He noted with satisfaction that just about every other entry on the list was in either his or Roxas's handwriting, all of them requesting ice cream.

"Shopping list," Axel corrected, raising only his eyes and tapping the document seriously.

"At least let me make it sound important," Saïx grumbled, rolling his eyes. "All you have to do is go get the items on the list. That does not mean that you are permitted to get sixteen boxes of ice cream bars just because you wrote it that many times."

Roxas made a noncommittal noise and peered over Axel's shoulder at the list. He recognized Saïx's clipped, neat handwriting as his eyes fell on a request for coffee. Vexen's doctor-y chicken scratch asked for a few assorted chemicals that Roxas wouldn't have been able to identify even if he could read the writing, Zexion's loopy cursive requested shampoo, and Xigbar, who had written his request upside down for some reason, wanted at least four twelve-packs of canned cola, presumably so that he could practice shooting the cans once their contents had been ingested. It took him a moment to differentiate between Demyx, Marluxia, and Larxene's handwriting because they all wrote in a decidedly 'girly' script, but he figured that only Demyx would request dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets and Marluxia was the only person in the castle who would possibly require Weed'n'Feed.

"So we really are just grocery shopping," Roxas said sadly. He was a little disappointed – Saïx had made it sound ever so important with all those big words. Then again, he supposed that was how everything in the Organization was. Who calls an elevator 'Crooked Ascension', anyways?

"Yes, Roxas, you are grocery shopping," Saïx snapped, his lips drawing back in a snarl to reveal slightly pointed eyeteeth. Seeing the alarmed look on Roxas's face, he regained his composure quickly and exhaled loudly.

His brief lapse into Berserker rage seemed to remind Axel of something and he hopped up and down with glee. "Oh, Roxas! You've never been to Halloween Town, have you?" The blonde eyed him warily and shook his head. "It's not like any other world you've been to. Well, I guess it is, you've been to Atlantica… But not really!" He held up his hands hastily when he saw the look on his friend's face at the mention of the mermaid kingdom. "What I mean is, whenever you go there, something about the atmosphere changes your duds. In Atlantica you grow a tail, but in Halloween Town they turn you into a monster! It's rad."

"Totally tubular?" Roxas asked sarcastically. He had to admit, though, that was pretty cool. What sort of monster would he be?

"Shut up. Saïx, you should come with us," Axel said, a devilish grin stretching his features. "You look pretty cool in Halloween Town."

Saïx smirked and went back to his book. "Not on your life, Axel."

The redhead didn't bother to pretend to pout, instead handing their 'acquisition dossier' off to Roxas and opening a corridor of darkness on the wall beside Saïx. "Fine, see ya around, x-face." Saïx looked up reproachfully but Axel grinned and set a hand on his shoulder, letting it rest for a moment as he walked by. "Maybe next time."

Number VII didn't answer immediately, but eventually smiled slightly and nodded. "Perhaps. Try not to scare Number XIII too much with your, er, costume."

"Let's go, Roxas!" Axel exclaimed, steering the youth into the swirling purple and black portal and winking at Saïx. The bluenette shooed them lazily without looking up from his book.


	3. Skeletons on Parade

_There would be a lot more Satanists if Axel was secretly Lucifer, I think._

* * *

Roxas popped out on the other side of the portal at a stumble as Axel had shoved him through at the last moment, presumably so he could tell Saïx about some totally awesome joke that he was going to play on the boy. The blonde looked down at himself and was disappointed to find that he was still wearing his standard-issue Organization cloak with no visible changes as far as he could tell. He was about to turn around and march back through the portal to complain when Axel strode out.

The Nobody was also clad in the Organization's uniform jacket and his hair remained a spiky explosion of red, but the rest of him had changed. A pair of curved ebony horns jutted backward from somewhere on the crown of his head, following the spikes of his hair. The small blueish tattoos under his eyes now looked like smears of blood and covered most of the skin around his eyes, which were no longer vibrant green but gaping voids of blackness. Even his friendly grin was sinister – it seemed as though the corners of his lips had been slit to widen his smile and reveal a row of sharp fangs where his straight white teeth had been only moments before.

Roxas uttered a little cry and stumbled backward, landing on his bum. "AH! DEMON SPAWN!"

"Somethin' like that," Axel replied, the tilt of his head indicating that he was giving his friend the once over despite his conspicuous lack of eyes. "Well you sure got the boring end of the stick, pumpkin head."

The young Nobody clapped his hands to his cheeks in horror, expecting to hear a hollow smack as his flesh contacted with pumpkin shell, but he found that his face felt more or less normal. He wasn't sure how he felt about this. He was glad that he didn't have a pumpkin for a head, to be sure, but as far as he could tell he hadn't changed at all.

"Guess I'm already enough of a monster," he joked with a shrug.

"Not quite," Axel contradicted. He reached over as if to pat Roxas on the head, but instead grabbed onto something, pulled it back, and released it with a twang. A mask that he hadn't felt before smacked directly into Roxas's face, leaving a red mark on his forehead. "Looks like you got landed with Sora's costume, minus the actual costume. Sucks to suck."

"How would you know that?" Thirteen snapped, rubbing his head where the mask had slapped him.

Axel turned his hollow gaze on his friend and grinned wickedly. "I'm omnipotent." In his current state, Roxas more or less believed him. His face relaxed and he scratched his head under one of his newly grown horns. "Anyways, I've got some people around this world I want to say hi to while we're here… How about you go get started on the list and I'll come find you later?"

"Uh, I guess that's alright," he replied. If he was being honest with himself, Axel's new form creeped him out. "Don't take too long, though, I'm not doing all the work for you."

Axel didn't reply, just waving dismissively and stalking off through the graveyard in which they had arrived on his spindly legs. Was he taller? Whatever.

It wasn't until Axel had disappeared from sight that it occurred to Roxas that he didn't know how to get to town. All he could really see around him was an expansive graveyard, a strange swirly mountainous landmark of sorts, and some trees off in the distance. He swore under his breath, picked a direction, and started walking.

Though it was night time here (or perhaps that was just how it was all the time in a place called Halloween Town), the light of the full moon was more than sufficient for him to pick his way through the grave stones and even to read the shopping list when he pulled it out of his jacket pocket for examination.

"Why does Xemnas want twenty sticks of butter?" he wondered aloud, only a few seconds before a purplish cloud obscured the moon and plunged him into darkness. Naturally, the Keyblade bearer tripped immediately over his own feet, or one of the locals reached up from the ground to grab his foot as a joke. Either way, he tumbled head over heels and, in the process, dropped the acquisition dossier on the ground.

"Ballocks," Roxas muttered, borrowing a word he had heard Luxord shout on many an occasion when he was losing at canasta. He dragged himself to his feet and patted the dust off his coat, grumbling as he did so, when he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. The blonde whipped around, squinting in the darkness. He had thought he'd seen Axel's thin frame silhouetted against a headstone, but there were no splashes of red in the darkness of the graveyard.

He was about to turn away when he saw him. It? He couldn't be sure – the thing had no distinguishable features. As far as he could tell, he was looking at a colossally tall, unnaturally thin man in a black suit. The hands poking out of his sleeves were bone white and claw-like, and its head was bald and devoid of facial features, though there were a few shadows that suggested that its papery skin was in fact stretched taut over empty eye sockets. It was hard to see in the darkness, but Roxas thought he might have seen shadowy tendrils growing from the creature's back, writhing like snakes.

It was then that Roxas crouched, feeling around behind him for the dropped shopping list, never taking his eyes off the strange unmoving being before him. His hand connected with the scrap of paper and he snatched it up, stuffing it into his jacket before sprinting off in the opposite direction of the thing creeping on him.

That was when the Slender Man started to chase him.


	4. Dynamo of Volition

_Well, I'm not sure exactly what happened but for some reason this last part didn't upload. I went out with my friends so I didn't realize this until just now, so... whoops. _

* * *

At this point, Roxas was dead on his ass and under the impression that Halloween Town didn't actually exist and he was running around the forest of some backwater world he had never heard of. Surely this was some cruel joke played on him by Axel and Saïx. That was just Axel in a stupid mask and Saïx was somewhere in the trees with a video camera snickering quietly… Maybe Demyx was in on it as well… Bastards.

He almost stopped dead and relayed his theory to his pursuer, but he decided against it when he looked over his shoulder once more and saw that he had been right about the tendrils of shadow springing from the Slender Man's back. Very sure that he did not want to be molested by said tendrils of shadow, poor Roxas pressed on, every now and then taking a turn in the woods to try to throw his chaser off the trail. He quickly discovered that this was a terrible, terrible idea; every few turns he found himself looking right at the Slender Man, just standing there as though Roxas might not see him in the darkness and run straight into him.

On his mystical journey through the woods, he came across several more of those stupid papers tacked to the trees. Some of them clearly featured his assailant – a stick figure in a suit with a white face – while others were mere scribbles, incoherent messages, or strange symbols that held no significance.

"How many of these are there…?" he panted to himself as he looked at his most recent acquisition. It read 'NO EYES ALWAYS WATCHING', a plethora of 'x'es marking the rest of the page. "I feel like I'm getting crazier every time I pick one of these stupid things up."

It probably wasn't the pages that were making Roxas feel frantic, however. Each time he grabbed one of the sketches off a tree, the Slender Man seemed to pursue him more vigilantly. Roxas could sense him getting closer than he had been before, but still not quite upon him. He saw him more frequently when he turned, though, and more than once he glanced to one side and saw the man standing between two trees right next to him as if to raise a claw or tentacle and clothesline the boy as he ran. This never happened, though. As far as Roxas could see, the man never actually moved.

Roxas was ready to throw himself on the ground and give up when he saw something that made his heart leap. Figuratively. A streak of red in the distance, so bright and distinct that it could only be one of two things. It could be a blood stain on a tree, in which case the Slender Man had succeeded in corralling him to its lair to dissect him and fling his intestines about in a festive manner. Or…

"Aaaaaaaxeeeeeeeelllllll!"

The redhead turned at the sound of his name and, despite his lack of eyeballs and generally horrifying appearance, Roxas couldn't have been more relieved to see him. He ran straight for the older Nobody's arms, letting out all his pent-up shrieks of terror as he went.

"Hey, I've been looking everywhere for you," Axel said, lifting a hand in greeting.

"Me too!" Roxas exclaimed as he drew near. "Where have you been?!"

Axel lifted an eyebrow. "Not you, dingus. What are you doing out here, anyways?" He didn't wait for an answer and peered past Roxas with a friendly wave. "Hey there John."

Roxas whirled and saw the Slender Man standing perfectly still, as ever, behind him. The blonde stumbled backward as the creature jerked as though it was breaking out of a shell of ice and slowly lifted an arm to wave stiffly. Its legs cracked similarly and it took a few steps forward, approaching Axel. It moved like a spider, thought Roxas, as it lifted its legs just a little too high and moved a little too slowly. Or a golem emerging from a thousand year slumber…

"Roxas, this is John Slenderman. You probably met his cousin Jack back in town," Axel said. "John, this is my buddy Roxas. You've probably noticed that he's a bit derpy."

"Nice to meet you, Roxas," Slenderman rasped. Roxas wasn't entirely sure where the sound was coming from, since he had no facehole, but decided not to comment on it. Now that he stood closer, he noticed that the man's breathing sounded like quiet airway static on the TV. "Glad to see you again. How have you been, Luci-"

"It's Axel now, actually," the demonic-looking Nobody interrupted quickly. "Commit it to memory."

"Lucy?" Roxas snorted. He was still a little uncomfortable around this John fellow who had given chase to him for what seemed like several hours, but this sounded potentially hilarious.

Had he been looking at Axel rather than Slenderman, he would have seen the Nobody flash his old friend a look that literally filled his eye sockets with fire that more or less meant 'not a word'. To Roxas, he said, "The folks around here knew me back when I was Lea. You put on a dress _one_ time and suddenly you're Lucy, you know?" He cleared his throat and inquired, "So why were you running around in the forest, Roxas?"

"Well," Roxas said sheepishly, looking at his feet. "I thought he was chasing me. And there were all these scary notes stapled to the trees and I thought he was going to eat me or else it was you and Saïx with video cameras trying to scare me so you could put it on youtube and profit."

"That was a run-on sentence," Axel corrected, raising an eyebrow at Slenderman. "Explain?"

"You dropped this," the monster said simply, producing the shopping list from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. "I think you grabbed something of mine instead by mistake… Several somethings, actually…"

Roxas pulled a small stack of wrinkled papers out of his pocket, pulling a face. "Aw, man. I'm sorry. You were just trying to help, huh?" He held the papers out. "What are these, anyways?"

"Slendy's a bit of a celebrity 'round these parts," Axel said matter-of-factly. "If Jack Skellington is like Santa Claus for the citizens of Halloween Town, then John Slenderman is their equivalent of the Easter Bunny. Except he hides children instead of eggs. That's his fan mail."

"Aw, shucks," John replied. He turned a little greyer in the face which Roxas interpreted as a blush.

"You hide children?" Roxas asked. He wasn't _surprised_, per se… He supposed that sort of thing would be a hit in a world that was rumored to have thought that Heartless would make 'nifty pets'.

"Sure," the Tall One replied. "I mean, I give them back eventually. They're usually my biggest fans, actually." He paused thoughtfully. "I've noticed that I'm not as popular on the other worlds, though."

Roxas cocked an eyebrow. "You can travel to other worlds?"

"Oh sure. I mean, I'm technically classified as hellspawn in the monster codex and-"

"Hey, Roxas," Axel interrupted once more, looking slightly alarmed. "You, uh… you didn't actually get any shopping done before now, did you?"

"Oh God, we are so late," he said, his eyes widening. "Saïx is going to kill us. He will literally kill us. He is going to eviscerate us and hang us from a tree with our own entrails and use our mangled corpses as playground equipment for the Elementary School That Never Was."

"Splendid!"

"No, no, no, that's not fun anymore," Axel told a cheerful-sounding Slenderman. "Listen, do you think you could help us with a mission? It's very important." He smiled as he heard an interested 'ooh' from the monster's general direction. John liked feeling important. He especially loved being filmed. "We're on a resource procurement mission, you see, and we could use some help with, uh, tracking and location…"

"Grocery shopping?"

"At least let me make it sound important."

"I'll take you to the Bizarre Bazaar."

* * *

_Hooray! It's over! It's over! Strongbad says it's over!_

_Actually I decided to write an epilogue detailing what happens with Saix so I'll tack that on at some point in the future. Don't judge me. Saix is my favorite.  
_

_Just to clear something up... Slenderman is his name in this fic. The Slender Man or the Tall One are his titles. I really don't understand it when people call him Slenderman, personally, but to each their own I suppose. Sorry if that confused anybody.  
_


	5. The Afterlife of the Party

_Okay it's finished for real this time lol._

* * *

It had been roughly two hours since Roxas' mishap with John Slenderman and he and Axel were attempting to decipher some of the last, more difficult to read items on the grocery list. John had bumped into his cousin, Jack Skellington, at the bazaar and had wandered off with him presumably to provide input on the new plans for the upcoming Halloween celebration.

"I can't read Xaldin's handwriting, what does this say?"

"I dunno, I think he used a freaking quill pen or something, it's all blobby…"

"I think it says 'Knotty Boy Wax'… Wow, not only is he a perv but he can't spell to save his life…"

Axel grimaced and plucked the shopping list out of Roxas' hands to give it another once-over. "Well, we're not buying _that_ so we might as well mark it off along with Zexion's request for the new My Chemical Romance album and Vexen's thing that we can't read…"

"Good plan," conceded Roxas, nodding. "So, what's left?"

The two friends mused over the paper in their hands, too absorbed in what they were doing to notice the atmosphere around them change. The crowd of monsters began to murmur, shifting gradually away from the market and seeming to congregate around something, buzzing excitedly.

"It's the Rake!"

"What a terrible sight!"

"He's horrifying!"

"Marry me!"

By the time Axel and Roxas had peeled their noses away from the acquisition dossier long enough to notice that they were face to face with Saïx. Sort of.

A pair of hollow eye sockets glared at them out of an elongated skull seemingly belonging to some sort of canine creature with three inch fangs and serrated teeth. Scraps of pale skin clung to the bone of the lower jaw and connecting the head to the rest of the body which was clad in the unmistakable uniform coat of Organization XIII, though it was torn almost to shreds. The state of his cloak was no surprise, given the foot long claws extending from within the lengthened sleeves of the jacket. The only feature confirming that the creature was, in fact, Saïx was the 'x' shape carved into the bone of its muzzle, right between its eyes.

"Ayo, Isa," Axel said, saluting cheerfully.

Roxas backpedaled and tried unsuccessfully to muffle a scream. This was even worse than Axel. He would have had a heart attack if he had one, he was sure of it.

The creature turned its head, gaze following Roxas' movements as he tripped over his cloak and tried to crawl away. "I see Thirteen got landed with the worst Halloween costume in recorded history," observed Saïx's voice as the lower jaw moved, making an audible clacking noise as it did.

"Right?" Axel replied a little incredulously, moving to stand beside his superior and watching Roxas wiggle around on the ground a little more. "He's also very easily startled. He actually ran from Slenderman. Can you believe it?"

Saïx considered the form in the dirt before him for a moment then replied decisively, "Yes, actually. Have you completed the resource procurement exercise yet?"

"We were about to leave when you showed up," Axel lied smoothly, stuffing the list into the pocket of his coat and grinning even more broadly than usual, displaying his rows of pearly white fangs. "Since you're here, though, there's no reason to RTC just yet, hm?" He looked meaningfully at Roxas, who was dragging himself to his feet using a rotten vegetable stand for support, his knees shaking dangerously.

"Perhaps not," Saïx replied, raising his claws over the boy's hunched form and opening his jaws wide as Axel picked up a stray pitch fork from one of the nearby counters and pulled a camera out of his jacket, grinning wickedly. "Thirteen, I'll need your mission report now…"

* * *

_And then they chased Roxas around and around for a couple hours and put it on YouTube. It was a splendid bonding experience for our favorite OTFP (one true friend pairing). _

_orz  
_

_Someone stop me from doing this to these characters ever again. Just kidding, don't, I want to write more Axel is Secretly Satan stories.  
_

_PEE ESS. I googled the Rake and picked my favorite image for my description of Saix, with a couple of liberties taken, obviously. He is usually supposed to look kind of like Gollum but I thought that a regular werewolf would be a bit too boring for my favorite Org. character so of course I found a picture where the Rake looked vaguely canine and stuff. Sorry if I offend any Slendyverse buffs with this sin against humanity, lul.  
_


End file.
